Hit-run breaks 92-year-old’s work record

Bernard Florack (left), 92, stands with his wife Ethel Florack (right), 85, at the site of his accident (at the corner of Douglas Drive and Point Degada) on Tuesday in Oceanside, California. Florack, a Walmart greeter, was injured in a hit and run accident on May 10th while on his way to work.

Eduardo Contreras

Bernard Florack (left), 92, stands with his wife Ethel Florack (right), 85, at the site of his accident (at the corner of Douglas Drive and Point Degada) on Tuesday in Oceanside, California. Florack, a Walmart greeter, was injured in a hit and run accident on May 10th while on his way to work.

Bernard Florack (left), 92, stands with his wife Ethel Florack (right), 85, at the site of his accident (at the corner of Douglas Drive and Point Degada) on Tuesday in Oceanside, California. Florack, a Walmart greeter, was injured in a hit and run accident on May 10th while on his way to work. (Eduardo Contreras)

After 92-year-old Oceanside resident Bernard H. Florack was run down in the street May 10 by a hit-and-run driver, he remembered just two things — the face of a medic telling him a helicopter would be flying him to a trauma center in La Jolla, and the feeling of great disappointment that he was going to be late for work.

Since 1998, Florack has worked as a greeter at the Walmart Supercenter on College Boulevard at Highway 76 and he has never — not once — been a minute late for work.

“I was on time all my life and that’s just who I am,” he said. “These days, punching a clock is the hardest thing I have to do, so I do it right.”

The retired publisher was crossing Douglas Drive with his walker at 5:50 a.m. that morning to catch a bus to work when a driver struck his walker, sending him crashing to the pavement, and drove off without stopping. The fall cracked an elbow (screws are now holding the bones together), fractured several ribs, caused bleeding in the brain and left Florack badly bruised and covered in a road rash that’s still healing on his face and neck.

After four days in ICU and two weeks in rehab, Florack is now home, recuperating from his injuries and facing thousands of dollars in bills to replace his walker, eyeglasses and the two hearing aids that popped out of his ears and disappeared at the crash site.

His son Peter, a computer draftsman who works in San Diego, said the accident was traumatic, but his father is doing surprisingly well. “He’s got good tough German genes.”

Florack said he’d like to find the neighbors who rushed to his aid when they heard the crash and, more important, to get back to work again soon at Walmart.

“I love working. It keeps me living,” Florack said. “I didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, so I don’t want to sit around and admire the scenery.”

Florack went to work for Walmart 19 years ago on the East Coast, before he and his wife of now 68 years, Ethel, moved to Oceanside for the warm weather. As a career newspaper publisher and commercial printer in Rochester, N.Y., he always liked jobs where he could interact with the public.

“It’s a pleasure when people come into the store and I can put them in a good mood for shopping and have some can chitchat. I always said if a person wants to be a psychologist, they should be a greeter because you really get to know humanity that way.”

Florack’s work station three days a week was in the garden center, where he’d see some of the same customers every day. In fact, one regular came to visit him in the hospital.

“People come in just to see Bernie,” said Adam Bower, the Walmart store manager. “He’s enriched the lives of not only the customers but also the associates who work here. Some younger associates don’t have one-tenth of his work ethic, and he’s absolutely friendly, engaging and knowledgeable. He’s always got some news of the world to share every time I see him.”

Store personnel manager Sara Orendin has worked with Florack for five years and said that he’s always been upbeat, outgoing and bursting with ideas on how to improve customer service. She said that on the day of the accident, Florack made sure that his wife got the news to the store that he wouldn’t make it in.

Oceanside Police Sgt. Matt Christensen said several witnesses were interviewed after the crash on Douglas Drive at Point Degada and described the vehicle that struck Florack as a dark sedan, perhaps a blue Suburu or black Honda, with tinted windows. He said Douglas is wide road with a higher speed limit, but he’s not aware of it having a higher than average number of accidents.

But the Floracks say neighbors have complained for a decade about speeding cars on Douglas Drive. When they moved three years ago into their son Peter’s home on Point Degada, Bernard’s first task was to write letters requesting a stop sign or crosswalk at the still-unmarked intersection to both the city of Oceanside and the letters page of the U-T San Diego. An avid newspaper letter writer, he has scrapbooks filled with the nearly 4,000 letters he’s had published over the years (when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he wrote the Nazi leader to complain and received back a polite form letter from Hitler’s secretary).

It was during World War II, while stationed in London as an Air Force noncommissioned officer, that Florack fell in love with Ethel — a London shop girl-turned-munitions inspector.

They met at a skating rink where Bernard said he arrived one night determined to ask out the prettiest girl there, and she recalls being charmed by his good looks and manners. Together they raised four children and have 10 grandchildren.

Ethel said her focus now is on helping her husband rehabilitate, with slow daily walks up and down the street and regular therapy to regain the full use of his right arm. Doctors say it may be months before he’s his old self again.